https://www.gofundme.com/stand4standingrock $107K
https://www.gofundme.com/immediate-sacred-stone-fund $8.5K
https://www.gofundme.com/bunk-bus-for-standing-rock-2vd8n8s $26K
https://www.gofundme.com/veterans-for-standing-rock-nodapl $94K
(That one really gets me--do they have any idea how many veterans work/worked/could go back to work in the oil industry in ND? Apparently not.)
https://www.gofundme.com/amodernghost $23.5K
for a few. Of the 'funds' I looked at, for everything from travel expenses to accupuncture to canned goods to yurts and a bus, most averaged about 1K, and ranged upward from a low of $70 (the only one in just two figures) to, more commonly several hundred to a few thousand dollars in donations so far.
Anyway, if you go to the gofundme.com site and enter "Standing Rock" there are at least 500 gofundme campaigns going on, and local rumor has it that over 2 million dollars has been raised by various means. This tribe has two Casino/resort operations (Prairie Knights Casino and Resort, and the Grand River Casino and Resort), but no oil. I guess they found a better way to raise money.
Considering that the information being propagated about the project is often misleading:
The pipeline is NOT going through Tribal Land.
The pipeline is not disturbing burial grounds.
The pipeline is supposed to go more than 80 feet below the bottom of the river in a hole horizontally drilled for that purpose.
This is the most technologically advanced pipeline yet, and will have shutoffs on either side of the water, just so that in the event the pipeline was to be damaged somehow, any possible damage would be minimized.
"Save the water" is a misleading slogan, too, from the aspect that the whole idea is to keep the oil out of the water. Tribal water supplies will be pulled from an intake near Mowbridge,
It is NOT in the interest of a pipeline company (effectively, a transport company) to fail to get the goods to their destination. Although far less likely, the effect of a leak is much the same as wrecking the truck, derailing the train, crashing the plane carrying cargo. Loss of cargo is not only bad for business, but an expense, and in the case of transporting oil, the expense of cleaning up and environmental remediation falls on the transport company, too (along with fines).
I wonder if a 'go fund me fund' with a ten million dollar goal was started to offset the costs of law enforcement at the protest site were started, how it would work out?
Perhaps a fund to offset the loss of income by thousands of oil workers whose industry could use the shot in the arm of cheaper, safer transport of crude oil, being held up at the rate of nearly half a million barrels of oil a day? (470,000 bopd was the proposed operating volume, capacity is about 100,000 bopd more.)
Maybe one to replace the additional taxes landowners will end up paying and royalty money that land and mineral owners won't get ($5 per barrel in increased costs, at 20% is a dollar a barrel royalty owners won't get, and fifty five cents a barrel the State won't get in extraction taxes used in part to offset local property taxes by funding schools).
For those who think mob 'just-us' is maybe a good idea, think again. This is "democracy" at work where people who have been misled lend their support to other people who are causing injury, not just in lost jobs and revenue, but damaging and destroying private property, butchering and killing livestock (called 'rustling' in these parts, and once a hanging offense), burning cars on a bridge and damaging what for residents of the area is critical infrastructure, and camping on Corps of Engineers land--something we can't use to go swimming for the day, much less camp out on. Keep in mind that 90% of these people protesting have no ties to the area except adding another anti-American anti-industry anti-oil protest to their resume.
BTW, if you go to the gofundme site and see the tipis in the snow with the trees in the background, well, that wasn't a picture from the protest area. We have neither had much snow this year, nor are there any birch trees in the area (or much of any trees, for that matter).